Eleanor Powell

 "A tap dancer is really a frustrated drummer."

With a preference toward ballet and acrobatics (notably her splits), Eleanor Powell did not initially tap in her early career. In fact, she disliked the style which she considered lacking in grace. It was only when she lost a number of musical roles in New York because she could not tap that she realized the need to learn. Due to her aerial style, she was taught to tap by being forced to wear army surplus ammunition belts with sandbags attached to ground herself. She was taught by Jack Donohue who at time gave private lessons in tap, reportedly paying him $35 for a course of 10 lessons.

In 1935, the leggy, fresh-faced Powell made the move from Broadway to Hollywood and performed a specialty number in her first major film, "George White's 1935 Scandals," which she later described as a disaster because she was accidentally made up to look like an Egyptian. The experience left her unimpressed with Hollywood and when she was courted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, she initially refused their offers of a contract. Reportedly, Powell attempted to dissuade the studio by making what she felt were unreasonable salary demands, but MGM agreed to them and she finally accepted. The studio groomed her for stardom, making minimal changes in her makeup and conduct.

Powell would go on to star opposite many of the decade's top leading men, including James Stewart, Robert Taylor, Fred Astaire, George Murphy, Nelson Eddy, and Robert Young. Among the films she made during the height of her career in the mid-to-late 1930s were "Born to Dance" (1936), "Rosalie" (1937), "Broadway Melody of 1938" (1937), "Honolulu" (1939), and "Broadway Melody of 1940" (1940). All of these movies featured her amazing solo tapping, although her increasingly huge production numbers began to draw criticism. Her characters also sang, but Powell's singing voice was usually (but not always) dubbed.

"Broadway Melody of 1940" had Powell starring opposite Fred Astaire, dancing to Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine," which is considered by many to be one of the greatest tap sequences in film history. According to accounts of the making of this film, including a documentary included on the DVD release, Astaire was somewhat intimidated by Powell, who was considered the only female dancer ever capable of out-dancing Astaire. In his autobiography "Steps in Time," Astaire remarked, "She 'put 'em down like a man', no ricky-ticky-sissy stuff with Ellie. She really knocked out a tap dance in a class by herself." In his introduction to the clip, featured in "That's Entertainment" (1974), Frank Sinatra said, "You know, you can wait around and hope, but you'll never see the likes of this again."

Happy Birthday, Eleanor Powell!